Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/167

 Anecdotes.

��I had an uncle, Cornelius Ford, who, upon a journey, stopped and read an inscription written on a stone he saw standing by the way-side, set up, as it proved, in honour of a man who had leaped a certain leap thereabouts, the extent of which was specified upon the stone : Why now, says my uncle, I could leap it in my boots ; and he did leap it in his boots. I had likewise another uncle, Andrew,' continued he, ' my father's brother, who kept the ring in Smithfield (where they wrestled and boxed) for a whole year 1, and never was thrown or conquered. Here now are uncles for you, Mistress 2, if that's the way to your heart.' Mr. Johnson was very conversant in the art of attack and defence by boxing, which science he had learned from his uncle Andrew, I believe ; and I have heard him descant upon the age when people were received, and when rejected, in the schools once held for that brutal amusement, much to the admiration of those who had no expectation of his skill in such matters 3 , from the sight of a figure which precluded all possibility of personal prowess 4 ; though, because he saw Mr. Thrale one day

��1 By ' kept the ring ' Johnson, no doubt, meant 'held it against all comers.' Smithfield had fallen in dig nity from the days when Richard II charged heralds ' to publish in Eng land, Scotland, Germany, Flanders, Brabant, Hainault and France that a great joust should be held in it on the Sunday after the Feast of St. Michael, which day was called " the Sunday of the Feast of Challenge." ' Froissart's Chronicles, ed. 1816, iv. 170.

2 ' He used to mention Mrs. Thrale by the epithets Madam or my Mis tress' Life, i. 494.

3 ' I am sorry,' he said, ' that prize fighting is gone out ; every art should be preserved, and the art of defence is surely important.' Ib. v. 229.

Figg, the prize fighter, told Chet- wood that he had not bought a shirt for more than twenty years. When he fought he sent round to a select

��number of his scholars to borrow one for the combat, and seldom failed of half a dozen from his prime pupils of the nobility and young gentry: each one thought that it was in his shirt the battle was fought. He informed his lenders of linen of the chasms their shirts received, and promised to send them home. * But/ said he, swer than " Damn you, keep it." ' R. W. Chetwood, General History of the Stage, 1749, p. 60.
 * I seldom received any other an

Figg died in 1734. Gentleman's Magazine, 1734, p. 703. See ib. 1731, p. 172, for his 'amphitheatre.'

4 * Johnson told me that one night he was attacked in the street by four men, to whom he would not yield, but kept them all at bay till the watch came up, and carried both him and them to the Roundhouse.' Life, ii. 299.

Bos well wrote of him in 1773 : ' Few men have his intrepidity, Her-

leap

�� �